How to Make Straw Bale Raised Bed Gardens

For those friends of mine that have asked me how we make our Straw Bale Raised Bed Gardens, here are some photos and how we do it:

This raised garden bed is made with 8 straw bales.  Sometimes we use 6 and sometimes we use 10 depending on the space where we are locating them. We line them up so it is easy to reach into the center of the bed from each side.  It makes it easier to pick our vegetables and also maintain weed prevention when it isn't too wide.

This photo shows the straw bales set in position on the shade cloth with the first load of alpaca manure in it.

First we lay weed cloth on the ground and then place the straw bales where we want them.  If we are using a wheel barrow to haul and dump alpaca, chicken and horse manure inside, then we keep one end open to make it easy to wheel into it.  The first load of manure in this garden was a wheel barrow full of alpaca manure.  the next load was a wheel barrow full of chicken manure. We spread it out with a rake and then dumped a few used tea bags, vegetable cuttings and egg shells.  We only use loose tea left overs or tea bags that are made of paper in our composting.  We put left over vegetable cuttings in our garden beds as well.

This shows the alpaca manure and the first load of chicken manure plus tea bags, egg shells and vegetable cuttings

We layer alfalfa hay alternately with horse manure, alpaca, and chicken manure because it gives extra protein in the compost and makes a very rich soil to plant vegetables in.  We make sure to water each layer thoroughly so there is plenty of moisture to help it compost rapidly.

If you are fortunate to have a tractor like we are, then it makes it so much easier to fill the bed with manure

This is layering more manure on top of the layer of alfalfa hay.

Once the raised beds are completely full we use a shovel to dig holes in the garden and bury vegetable cuttings and let them compost making sure that we water the bed periodically to help it compost more rapidly.  We also dig or stir the dirt as it is composting to make sure it gets mixed together and fully composts.  It usually takes about 14 days to compost these beds.

The bed is completely filled with the various layers of manure and alfalfa hay, raked & well watered.

When we were first using llama and alpaca manure we didn't bother to compost it because we could plant directly into it without it burning the plants like un-composted chicken, cow and horse manure does...However we used to feed our llamas, alpacas and horses Orchard Grass Hay - so there was no problem.  Last year we switched to feeding our horses and alpacas Bermuda Grass Hay and it has to be composted now or we end up with our own hay field in our raised beds! ...now we have our own nice hay crop to feed them with and a lot of work to do to re build those gardens once we get the hay out of them!

We cut heavy duty plastic and cover the bed to hold in the moisture and allow it to heat up so it will compost quickly.  We remove the plastic every few days and stir up the soil so it can blend and compost thoroughly.  We have such high winds sometimes here in the High Desert that we need to make sure we keep the plastic secured so some of our wood from our wood pile comes in handy to hold it in place.

  
 The photo below shows a 6 Straw Bale Raised Garden Bed that we made in the early fall of 2011 and composted.  We grew some late squash in it that was quite tasty.  We recently planted some garlic in it which is already beginning to come up.  We also planted sugar peas which are peeking through just barely and a couple of different kinds of squash.  I'll be adding some Nasturtiums to give it a little more color plus Nasturtiums are eatable flowers that are great in salads!

After this planting we will amend the soil so it will stay rich and healthy and provide super healthy veggies!

Sometimes we add earth worms but most of the time they just appear on their own!  We will have quite a few more raised beds this year.  We plan to do some canning and some food dehydration as well as freezing some of our vegetables and fruit this year.  So when it is time to do that, I might blog a little about food preservation.

This is "Stormy" one of our outside "Watch Cats"  I guess he thinks he's doing his job keeping the birds out of the garden!